Tag Archives: Anwar al-Awlaki

The FBI’s elite surveillance unit tracked the radical American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki to the Pentagon entrance for his controversial luncheon speech to senior Defense Department officials on February 5, 2002, according to newly declassified documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The more than 250 pages of FBI surveillance logs, marked “secret” and obtained by Judicial Watch and reviewed by Fox News, show the FBI’s Special Surveillance Group or SSG, which is reserved for tracking suspected terrorists and espionage cases, trailed the cleric for six hours before watching him enter the Pentagon from the subway with two unidentified woman who escorted him into the building.

Al-Awlaki, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011, addressed the luncheon on “Islam and Middle Eastern Politics and Culture.”

According to the FBI log, at 11:30 am “Aulaqi boarded the Metro train, blue line, north for the Pentagon.” At 11:32, “Aulaqi exited the Metro train, walked through the turnstyle (sic) and greeted two unidentified white females.” At 11:40 am, “Aulaqi and the two unidentified females walked through the train station, onto the escalator, walked southwest and west adjacent to the Pentagon, up to the steps and walked northeast toward the entrance to the Pentagon.” And at 12:00pm “Surveillance discontinued at the Pentagon.”

As part of a section also dated February 5 and titled “Analysis/Administrative Data,” the FBI surveillance logs state that the agent in charge of the Awlaki case was apparently aware of the cleric’s planned luncheon, though it is unknown whether this information was picked up through the monitoring of the cleric’s phone and email, or whether the case agent had learned the information directly from the cleric.

WND: Are you one of those Americans who wonders what happened to the Islamist terrorist who massacred U.S. soldiers at Fort Hood more than three years ago?

Or maybe you’re one of those Americans who assumes Maj. Nidal Hasan long ago assumed room temperature after being summarily executed for murdering 13 and wounding more than 32, while screaming “Allahu Akbar,” or “Allah is greatest.”

There hasn’t been much news on the case. The Big Media would obviously like Americans to forget about this case. The government would like you to forget about it, too. In fact, Attorney General Eric Holder declined to press terrorism charges against Hasan, inexplicably labeling the worst terrorist attack in America since 9/11 as a case of “workplace violence.”

As a result of this callous, politically motivated and criminally devious decision, the victims of Hasan’s shooting spree will not be entitled to the benefits of soldiers wounded or killed in the line of duty.

How absurd is it? So absurd even über-RINO Susan Collins is slamming the Obama admin for failing to identify the threat as radical Islam.

(Fox News) — Sen. Susan Collins on Wednesday blasted the Defense Department for classifying the Fort Hood massacre as workplace violence and suggested political correctness is being placed above the security of the nation’s Armed Forces at home.

During a joint session of the Senate and House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, the Maine Republican referenced a letter from the Defense Department depicting the Fort Hood shootings as workplace violence. She criticized the Obama administration for failing to identify the threat as radical Islam.

Thirteen people were killed and dozens more wounded at Fort Hood in 2009, and the number of alleged plots targeting the military has grown significantly since then. Lawmakers said there have been 33 plots against the U.S. military since Sept. 11, 2001, and 70 percent of those threats have been since mid-2009. Major Nidal Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, who is being held for the attacks, allegedly was inspired by radical U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in late September. The two men exchanged as many as 20 emails, according to U.S. officials, and Awlaki declared Hasan a hero.

(Reuters) – American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.

The Department of Justice produced it prior to the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki. But they won’t release it.

Outside the U.S. government, President Obama’s order to kill American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without due process has proved controversial, with experts in law and war reaching different conclusions. Inside the Obama Administration, however, disagreement was apparently absent, or so say anonymous sources quoted by the Washington Post. “The Justice Department wrote a secret memorandum authorizing the lethal targeting of Anwar al-Aulaqi, the American-born radical cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone strike Friday, according to administration officials,” the newspaper reported. “The document was produced following a review of the legal issues raised by striking a U.S. citizen and involved senior lawyers from across the administration. There was no dissent about the legality of killing Aulaqi, the officials said.”